The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
President Donald Trump’s health team has deep financial ties to the supplements industry. Now they’re poised to boost its growth and remake the government’s approach to health.
Hospital-based violence intervention programs have operated in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. The public health approach to gun violence works, by many accounts. But recent moves by the White House are raising anxiety about the programs’ future.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is offline — for now. Here’s what that could mean for people with medical debt.
Many patients ready to leave the hospital end up lingering for days or weeks — occupying beds that others need and driving up costs — because of a lack of open spots at nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities. A few health systems are addressing this problem by moving post-acute rehab into the home.
Unnecessarily high radiation doses in scans have been linked to cancers. Under new federal rules, doctors and imaging centers have to more closely track and report the doses of radiation that patients receive.
California businesses saw employees’ monthly family insurance premiums rise nearly $1,000 over a 15-year period, more than double the pace of inflation. And employees’ share grew as companies shifted more of the cost to workers.
Last year, the government stopped cutting off people’s monthly Social Security benefits to claw back overpayments. Last week, under President Donald Trump, it reversed that change.
The American Medical Association and the leading nursing home trade group both are lobbying Republicans in Congress on other priorities.
The proposal also would reverse a Biden administration policy that allowed “Dreamers” — immigrants in the country illegally who were brought here as children — from qualifying for subsidized ACA coverage.
The latest outbreak of bird flu has upended egg, poultry, and dairy operations, sickened dozens of farmworkers, and killed at least one person in the U.S. KFF Health News national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen explains why scientists are worried.
Nearly 3 million Americans live sicker, shorter lives in the hundreds of rural counties where doctor shortages are the worst and poor internet connections mean little or no access to telehealth services.
The FDA has relied on food companies for decades to determine whether their ingredients are safe. Some chemicals and additives are tied to health risks while others are absent from product labels.
As a deputy chief technology officer in the Obama administration, Jennifer Pahlka brought Silicon Valley talent to Washington to streamline public access to government services. She believes better government technology could both ensure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted and that people who need health care and food assistance receive it.
Republicans have proposed legislation in several states to ban the pioneering technology used in covid shots. Many doctors worry a huge medical advance could be rolled back.
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As policymakers in Washington debate potentially steep funding cuts to Medicaid, Republicans are using terms such as “money laundering” and “discrimination” to make their case. Language experts and Medicaid advocates say their word choice is misleading and designed to sway the public against the popular program.
Should Marty Makary take the reins at the FDA, transitioning from gadfly to the head of an agency that regulates a fifth of the U.S. economy, he would have to engage in the thorny challenges of governing.
The Supreme Court opined for the first time that Trump administration officials may be exceeding their authority to reshape the federal government by refusing to honor completed contracts, even as lower-court judges started blocking efforts to fire workers, freeze funding, and cancel ongoing contracts. Meanwhile, public health officials are alarmed at the Department of Health and Human Services’ public handling of Texas’ widening measles outbreak, particularly the secretary’s less-than-full endorsement of vaccines. Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and Politico Magazine, and Stephanie Armour of KFF Health News join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.
Hoarding disorder disproportionately affects older people. As baby boomers age, it is a growing public health concern. Effective treatments are scarce, and treating hoarding can require expensive interventions that drain municipal resources. Some experts fear a coming crisis.
At a town hall in Orange County, California, angry residents said Congress should keep its hands off Medicaid. The cuts contemplated in a House budget blueprint would bore a giant hole in California’s version of the safety net health insurance program, Medi-Cal, which covers nearly 15 million residents.
